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> All companies are fucked up... the trick is finding a company that's fucked up in a way that works for you I think another way to phrase this is "No company

> All companies are fucked up... the trick is finding a company that's fucked up in a way that works for you I think another way to phrase this is "No company is perfect, don't let good be the enemy of perfect, find a company that ticks as many of your boxes while triggering as few or zero of your red flags" or something like that. Is my job "perfect"? Absolutely not but it's pretty damn close and compared to my past jobs it's by far the best (if you can't say this then you might want to shop around). I have a friend who gets every Friday off, is that nice? Sure is but I wouldn't like a number of other things about the company he works for. Life/work is a series of tradeoffs/comprimsies, just make sure you are feel like you have more positives than negatives and you'll be happy. I'm extremely thankful that early in my career I realized that I enjoy working for smaller companies. I was "lucky" enough to essentially be contracted out to a big client and I hated almost every aspect of it (except that I loved working on a single product vs the small little projects for various clients as I had done before). I took that experience and found a job at a small company that had a couple of products that I could iterate on and improve. It's common to say something like "If you aren't changing jobs every 2-4 years you are leaving a ton of money on the table", that's mostly true but one other big benefit of moving companies is you get to exposed to a bunch of different ways companies are run, their culture, etc. I feel like every time I've switched jobs I've moved closer and closer to my personal "perfect", in part because I've recognized the red flags from my past/current jobs and watched for them before accepting an offer at a new place.

michaelcampbell 4y ago
Indeed. Be serious and honest with yourself about stuff you love, and see how many of those things your company is/does, and stuff you hate, and how many of those your company is/does.
theonething 4y ago
> I have a friend who gets every Friday off, is that nice? I'm in a similar boat as you. I really like where I'm at and if they switched to 4 day work weeks, it would be as perfect as it could get in terms of a job for me. Here's to hoping.
smcg 4y ago
It's still fucked up if you think about it.
- frankish 4y ago
  True, but life eats life: the universe is a fucked up place in general. We can iterate and strive for the ideal/perfect, but I think we gotta be pragmatic with the short time we get to experience it. And "perfect" might mostly be in the eye of the beholder like beauty -- impossible to get everyone to agree.
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    “And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.” -John Steinbeck
scrapcode 4y ago
I mostly agree. I'm at a point now where it's hard to believe that I could ever find a gig in my [broad] industry that has a balance that benefits my home life as much (100% remote, flexible schedule, great supervisor, low stress work, slow paced). However, it absolutely bores me to tears. It's quite literally the "dream job" that I had always imagined - I can play video games all day if I'd like, go fishing for half an hour here and there in the neighborhood lake, etc. - but I really want challenge again. I would almost guarantee that I'm going to have to give up a lot of those "freedoms" to get that 8hours of challenge back into my life. From here, my worry is the regret when it almost inevitably affects my home and family time in a negative light. When I miss that baseball game later down the road or am on a "business trip" for a family event that I most certainly wouldn't ever have to do in the position that I am in now, it'll likely make me 'kick myself' for not keeping this position.
- allanmacgregor 4y ago
  > I can play video games all day if I'd like, go fishing for half an hour here and there in the neighborhood lake, etc. Twitter ? ;P
  - scrapcode 4y ago
    Thankfully, no. It's more of a "standby until shit hits the fan" kind of field.
- sanman811 4y ago
  I felt this exact thing at my last job! I thought I finally had everything I wanted but turns out I was unchallenged and unsatisfied. A couple things that helped me were picking up other challenging hobbies or books that helped me feel stimulated but ultimately I ended up with a new job. Turns out the perfect workday is not 2 hours of boring work but 5-7 hours of focused, interesting work.
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
  > From here, my worry is the regret when it almost inevitably affects my home and family time in a negative light. When I miss that baseball game later down the road or am on a "business trip" for a family event that I most certainly wouldn't ever have to do in the position that I am in now, it'll likely make me 'kick myself' for not keeping this position. I worry about this constantly myself, I'm fully remote and I hope that I'll lapse into a sort of malaise at home and I'll start missing out on things I otherwise wouldn't.
tootie 4y ago
Also, I think you can actually generalize "any company" to "any organized human endeavor". People like to point out the flaws in governments, religious orders, the local PTA. Same thing. Get a group of humans together and watch them malfunction.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been an observer, seen family/friends deal with it, and/or been in leadership positions in a number of such organizations and they all have their own issues/dysfunction. Some were tolerable, others were not. Realizing you have a lot of (if not full) control over what you associate with (company, religious org, etc) and therefore what levels of malfunction you do/don’t have to deal with is freeing. Specially with companies, I’ve had to encourage a number of friends/ex-coworkers to start looking for a new job after hearing what they put up with. The imposter syndrome is strong and feeling like they couldn’t get a better job (pay and/or environment). It’s wonderful when they get a new job and realize how what they dealt with was not “normal” or “ok”.
dkarl 4y ago
> It's common to say something like "If you aren't changing jobs every 2-4 years you are leaving a ton of money on the table", that's mostly true but one other big benefit of moving companies is you get to exposed to a bunch of different ways companies are run, their culture, etc. Yes, it's funny, many developers are strongly oriented towards "I must develop myself and become better" or "I must get the best deal for myself" which they see as polar opposites, it's an important part of one's identity to prioritize one over the other, but in either case I think two year tenures are best. Companies should pay a big premium for developers staying longer than two years, but they pay less, I think because they assume developers who aren't moving are unambitious/coasting/used up.
- eastbound 4y ago
  Or because the best way to exchange information and improve knowledge and skills and processes at a corporate level is to precisely exchange people with other companies.
ehnto 4y ago
> I'm extremely thankful that early in my career I realized that I enjoy working for smaller companies Same. I have at worked at bigger organisations, at some mid point in my career, and it was reaffirming. I won't dig into the details, but when I think of the word "institutionalized" I think of how peculiar the way big orgs make you approach most tasks. Your skillset becomes intertwined with the institutions until you become encumbered and perversed with arbitrary approaches to things that don't apply outside your institution. You become ossified by these ideas and leaving becomes harder and harder.
- tibbydudeza 4y ago
  Worked for a corporate and it was amazing to witness folks doing "BS" jobs and getting away with it and people contributing nothing measurable to project outcomes except attending meetings and the release party. I work for much smaller company now - sure there is more pressure, a level of disorganization but everybody contributes.
- yaky 4y ago
  My former coworker called it “making your own ball and chain”, and he is a prime example of this as well. He was very good as SAP and ABAP development, so most SAP work would get assigned to him because he can have it done faster than anyone else. Which also means no one else is getting much experience or training on SAP. And because he is always busy with SAP, he never gets trained on anything else either. Leaving was not a realistic option due to lack of experience in any development outside of SAP and SAP setup and customizations being very specific to the industry and the company.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
Isn’t it “perfect is the enemy of good?” I’m trying to see a reason for the word inversion, but it isn’t apparent to me.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  It is, though I think they can be reversed while meaning the same thing. As for the whole “Why I decided on the inversion”: I’ve got no idea. It sounded right in context (in my head) and I should have googled it quickly to make sure I had the phrase right. My bad.
- smolder 4y ago
  It's funny that when a phrase is used enough, it stops just being it's constituent parts. In this case, the inversion has no effect on the meaning.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    “Good is the enemy of perfect” would mean just trying to make something good enough means it will probably not be perfect. Which…ok…makes sense. I’ll have to run that by RPG next time I see him.
    - smolder 4y ago
      Isn't someone naturally their enemies enemy? It seems commutative.
esjeon 4y ago
> I feel like every time I've switched jobs I've moved closer and closer to my personal "perfect", in part because I've recognized the red flags from my past/current jobs and watched for them before accepting an offer at a new place. I'm pretty sure it's also because people do grow up bit-by-bit when they're exposed to different environments. Clearly, seniors can handle much more fuck-ups (or imperfections) than fresh graduates, often in much more graceful ways. I just thought this should never be underestimated.
esel2k 4y ago
> I'm extremely thankful that early in my career I realized that I enjoy working for smaller companies How did you determine this? I an in this big question and I have worked for a small company but the lack of money, totalitarian decision making (CEO) and crazy hours didn’t work out for me. I‘ve put in more (health, lower salary) for more fun/culture. I would love to try it again (small company) as I enjoyed certain aspect such as a great culture, techminded and young but beeing the main income at home I am sticking to my BS job in a big corp so far (unfortunately). How did you determine what is a good vs bad small company?
- joshstrange 4y ago
  The company I worked for before my current one had a lot of money problems so being profitable (even marginally so) was a requirement for me. Other than that I was fortunate that the company I now work for found me on HN (Who wants to be hired monthly thread) and that in all the interviews I got nothing but good “vibes” and saw no red flags. Almost 3 years later that’s held true and I’ve helped get 3 friends/ex-coworkers hired (I’d never invite even acquaintances to what I though was a bad environment or a sinking ship). I liked my coworkers already and adding in 3 people I know I work well with has been an immense joy. I don’t know how you need to make to provide for your house but I live in a LCoL area and make on the lower end of CA wages (working for a CA company, <15 people). For me this works well as I have a good amount of headroom the grow (it’s already happened, I got around a 17% raise after a little over a year there and multiple bonuses) and I’m making way more than most jobs locally (aside from some really stuffy corporate jobs I’d never take). It’s a different story when you providing for a family but my approach has been to never assume my job is guaranteed (which it’s not, no matter how big the company) and to plan for if I’ll lose my job tomorrow. That sounds super stressful but I literally never think or worry about it because I’ve got 6-8+ months in my emergency fund (shout out to YNAB for changing my life w.r.t. budgeting). I won’t pretend what I’ve done/found was easy or that “anyone can do it” but it can be done. There are good small companies to work for that don’t suffer from the issues you mentioned (though I know exactly what you are talking about and have experienced that as well). Life is short and I’m so glad I found the company I currently work for. My work/life balance is amazing, I enjoy what I work on, my work makes a tangible difference, I get to help shape the company’s future, and I work with talented people who I like.

michaelcampbell 4y ago

Indeed. Be serious and honest with yourself about stuff you love, and see how many of those things your company is/does, and stuff you hate, and how many of those your company is/does.

theonething 4y ago

> I have a friend who gets every Friday off, is that nice? I'm in a similar boat as you. I really like where I'm at and if they switched to 4 day work weeks, it would be as perfect as it could get in terms of a job for me. Here's to hoping.

smcg 4y ago

It's still fucked up if you think about it.

frankish 4y ago
True, but life eats life: the universe is a fucked up place in general. We can iterate and strive for the ideal/perfect, but I think we gotta be pragmatic with the short time we get to experience it. And "perfect" might mostly be in the eye of the beholder like beauty -- impossible to get everyone to agree.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  “And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.” -John Steinbeck

scrapcode 4y ago

I mostly agree. I'm at a point now where it's hard to believe that I could ever find a gig in my [broad] industry that has a balance that benefits my home life as much (100% remote, flexible schedule, great supervisor, low stress work, slow paced). However, it absolutely bores me to tears. It's quite literally the "dream job" that I had always imagined - I can play video games all day if I'd like, go fishing for half an hour here and there in the neighborhood lake, etc. - but I really want challenge again. I would almost guarantee that I'm going to have to give up a lot of those "freedoms" to get that 8hours of challenge back into my life. From here, my worry is the regret when it almost inevitably affects my home and family time in a negative light. When I miss that baseball game later down the road or am on a "business trip" for a family event that I most certainly wouldn't ever have to do in the position that I am in now, it'll likely make me 'kick myself' for not keeping this position.

allanmacgregor 4y ago
> I can play video games all day if I'd like, go fishing for half an hour here and there in the neighborhood lake, etc. Twitter ? ;P
- scrapcode 4y ago
  Thankfully, no. It's more of a "standby until shit hits the fan" kind of field.
sanman811 4y ago
I felt this exact thing at my last job! I thought I finally had everything I wanted but turns out I was unchallenged and unsatisfied. A couple things that helped me were picking up other challenging hobbies or books that helped me feel stimulated but ultimately I ended up with a new job. Turns out the perfect workday is not 2 hours of boring work but 5-7 hours of focused, interesting work.
Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
> From here, my worry is the regret when it almost inevitably affects my home and family time in a negative light. When I miss that baseball game later down the road or am on a "business trip" for a family event that I most certainly wouldn't ever have to do in the position that I am in now, it'll likely make me 'kick myself' for not keeping this position. I worry about this constantly myself, I'm fully remote and I hope that I'll lapse into a sort of malaise at home and I'll start missing out on things I otherwise wouldn't.

tootie 4y ago

Also, I think you can actually generalize "any company" to "any organized human endeavor". People like to point out the flaws in governments, religious orders, the local PTA. Same thing. Get a group of humans together and watch them malfunction.

joshstrange 4y ago
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been an observer, seen family/friends deal with it, and/or been in leadership positions in a number of such organizations and they all have their own issues/dysfunction. Some were tolerable, others were not. Realizing you have a lot of (if not full) control over what you associate with (company, religious org, etc) and therefore what levels of malfunction you do/don’t have to deal with is freeing. Specially with companies, I’ve had to encourage a number of friends/ex-coworkers to start looking for a new job after hearing what they put up with. The imposter syndrome is strong and feeling like they couldn’t get a better job (pay and/or environment). It’s wonderful when they get a new job and realize how what they dealt with was not “normal” or “ok”.

dkarl 4y ago

> It's common to say something like "If you aren't changing jobs every 2-4 years you are leaving a ton of money on the table", that's mostly true but one other big benefit of moving companies is you get to exposed to a bunch of different ways companies are run, their culture, etc. Yes, it's funny, many developers are strongly oriented towards "I must develop myself and become better" or "I must get the best deal for myself" which they see as polar opposites, it's an important part of one's identity to prioritize one over the other, but in either case I think two year tenures are best. Companies should pay a big premium for developers staying longer than two years, but they pay less, I think because they assume developers who aren't moving are unambitious/coasting/used up.

eastbound 4y ago
Or because the best way to exchange information and improve knowledge and skills and processes at a corporate level is to precisely exchange people with other companies.

ehnto 4y ago

> I'm extremely thankful that early in my career I realized that I enjoy working for smaller companies Same. I have at worked at bigger organisations, at some mid point in my career, and it was reaffirming. I won't dig into the details, but when I think of the word "institutionalized" I think of how peculiar the way big orgs make you approach most tasks. Your skillset becomes intertwined with the institutions until you become encumbered and perversed with arbitrary approaches to things that don't apply outside your institution. You become ossified by these ideas and leaving becomes harder and harder.

tibbydudeza 4y ago
Worked for a corporate and it was amazing to witness folks doing "BS" jobs and getting away with it and people contributing nothing measurable to project outcomes except attending meetings and the release party. I work for much smaller company now - sure there is more pressure, a level of disorganization but everybody contributes.
yaky 4y ago
My former coworker called it “making your own ball and chain”, and he is a prime example of this as well. He was very good as SAP and ABAP development, so most SAP work would get assigned to him because he can have it done faster than anyone else. Which also means no one else is getting much experience or training on SAP. And because he is always busy with SAP, he never gets trained on anything else either. Leaving was not a realistic option due to lack of experience in any development outside of SAP and SAP setup and customizations being very specific to the industry and the company.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

Isn’t it “perfect is the enemy of good?” I’m trying to see a reason for the word inversion, but it isn’t apparent to me.

joshstrange 4y ago
It is, though I think they can be reversed while meaning the same thing. As for the whole “Why I decided on the inversion”: I’ve got no idea. It sounded right in context (in my head) and I should have googled it quickly to make sure I had the phrase right. My bad.
smolder 4y ago
It's funny that when a phrase is used enough, it stops just being it's constituent parts. In this case, the inversion has no effect on the meaning.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  “Good is the enemy of perfect” would mean just trying to make something good enough means it will probably not be perfect. Which…ok…makes sense. I’ll have to run that by RPG next time I see him.
  - smolder 4y ago
    Isn't someone naturally their enemies enemy? It seems commutative.

esjeon 4y ago

> I feel like every time I've switched jobs I've moved closer and closer to my personal "perfect", in part because I've recognized the red flags from my past/current jobs and watched for them before accepting an offer at a new place. I'm pretty sure it's also because people do grow up bit-by-bit when they're exposed to different environments. Clearly, seniors can handle much more fuck-ups (or imperfections) than fresh graduates, often in much more graceful ways. I just thought this should never be underestimated.

esel2k 4y ago

> I'm extremely thankful that early in my career I realized that I enjoy working for smaller companies How did you determine this? I an in this big question and I have worked for a small company but the lack of money, totalitarian decision making (CEO) and crazy hours didn’t work out for me. I‘ve put in more (health, lower salary) for more fun/culture. I would love to try it again (small company) as I enjoyed certain aspect such as a great culture, techminded and young but beeing the main income at home I am sticking to my BS job in a big corp so far (unfortunately). How did you determine what is a good vs bad small company?

joshstrange 4y ago
The company I worked for before my current one had a lot of money problems so being profitable (even marginally so) was a requirement for me. Other than that I was fortunate that the company I now work for found me on HN (Who wants to be hired monthly thread) and that in all the interviews I got nothing but good “vibes” and saw no red flags. Almost 3 years later that’s held true and I’ve helped get 3 friends/ex-coworkers hired (I’d never invite even acquaintances to what I though was a bad environment or a sinking ship). I liked my coworkers already and adding in 3 people I know I work well with has been an immense joy. I don’t know how you need to make to provide for your house but I live in a LCoL area and make on the lower end of CA wages (working for a CA company, <15 people). For me this works well as I have a good amount of headroom the grow (it’s already happened, I got around a 17% raise after a little over a year there and multiple bonuses) and I’m making way more than most jobs locally (aside from some really stuffy corporate jobs I’d never take). It’s a different story when you providing for a family but my approach has been to never assume my job is guaranteed (which it’s not, no matter how big the company) and to plan for if I’ll lose my job tomorrow. That sounds super stressful but I literally never think or worry about it because I’ve got 6-8+ months in my emergency fund (shout out to YNAB for changing my life w.r.t. budgeting). I won’t pretend what I’ve done/found was easy or that “anyone can do it” but it can be done. There are good small companies to work for that don’t suffer from the issues you mentioned (though I know exactly what you are talking about and have experienced that as well). Life is short and I’m so glad I found the company I currently work for. My work/life balance is amazing, I enjoy what I work on, my work makes a tangible difference, I get to help shape the company’s future, and I work with talented people who I like.